[uf-new] Launching the hVideo exploratory discussion!

Mary Hodder mary at dabble.com
Tue Sep 11 12:45:38 PDT 2007


Hi Manu,

So the names you use here:    http://microformats.org/wiki/video-info- 
examples#Properties    don't all make sense to me.  Where did they  
come from?  Some of them I've never seen used before.

Published?  that does mean anything without the explanation.  Why  
can't you just use "date" so that we know what you are talking  
about?  No need for long explanations if we do that.

There are examples here:
http://microformats.org/wiki/media-info-examples#Video

Why do you need more examples?  In the new page you just made here:
http://microformats.org/wiki/video-info-examples

Why not combine?

You've surveyed the hosters (which I'd already done somewhat on the  
old page here: http://microformats.org/wiki/media-info-examples#Video)
and we have the individually published items here at this page (p:// 
microformats.org/wiki/video-info-examples).

So our combined info, spread across two wiki pages, makes the case  
for the simple list of metadata about video for publishers based upon  
what they do in practice.

I'm not really sure what you are getting at with your list of  
properties then?

We know what the examples are, we've documented them, and the  
properties list takes us askew.

We know people, all over the web, across the 27 million videos Dabble  
has indexed, as well as the rest of the videos we don't have but are  
mostly hosted by those same 1000 hosters, that this list rings true:

>> title
>> html url (sometimes same and sometimes different from the url to  
>> embed,
>> or link directly to the video)
>> video url (if existing - could and needs to have multiples, see  
>> Blip or Revver or soon
>> to be Youtube)
>> category and / or tags
>> description
>> license
>> creator or uploader or both (many youtube videos have both, with
>> "director" as the creator designation)
>> embed code
>> size
>> duration

and if you want to have it, then add these:
views
comments
ratings

If most video is not for sale, why does your properties list have  
"purchase url" and "price" or why have "report url".. that isn't used  
at all by anyone in any feeds or published video we see at all.  What  
is the difference between "flash player url" and "embed" .. they are  
the same thing and given in <embed> tags typically.

By putting price and purchase URL right at the top of the definitions  
you are giving me the impression that you care most about that.

If you'd like, I can edit the wiki list to make sense to regular  
people (ie change published to date or whatever) and then we can make  
a simple microformat out of a more simple list.  But the list you  
provided, in the order you provided, is not what we see people  
publish, and it's not reflected in the example on either wiki page  
(my older one, or your newer one).

mary



On Sep 11, 2007, at 12:11 PM, Manu Sporny wrote:

> Mary Hodder wrote:
>> Is the video microformat use case one that is about video hosters or
>> about what users do, or both?
>
> Both... we're going for general video metadata markup. :)
>
>> At Dabble, as we take in metadata from both sources, we see users and
>> hosters publishing titles, thumbnail (users don't call it "image
>> summary" and actually, the hosters don't either much), category AND
>> tags, uploader, director or creator, license, description, duration,
>> sometimes size, and almost always, urls for html page, with some  
>> people
>> giving multiple download and streaming urls.
>
> Just to be clear, those names are "property names"... they are not the
> official Microformat "class name" that we are going to use in  
> hVideo. It
> is too early to decide on a vocabulary yet... expect most of those  
> names
> to change (re-used from other Microformats if possible, created if  
> there
> is no other choice). We do, however, define what every one of those
> property names mean on the video-info-examples page:
>
> http://microformats.org/wiki/video-info-examples#Properties
>
>> In fact there is almost
>> always a "permalink url" (how did you come up with 58% on that one?)
>
> The Permalink URLs are for sites that explicitly state a Permalink URL
> on the page. Believe it or not, only 58% of the examples had  
> permalinks.
> I was surprised as well, but it shows us why we collect examples.
>
>> because no one would be able to get to it if that didn't exist.
>>
>> What we never see is "published" (what does that mean?) or "email  
>> video
>> url" in a feed or api..
>
> All definitions of property names are listed on the video-info- 
> examples
> page:
>
> http://microformats.org/wiki/video-info-examples#Properties
>
> published - The Published Date specifies the date that a video file  
> was
> made available to the public. Examples include: The airing date of a
> video podcast, the air date of a television show, or the release  
> date of
> a movie.
>
>> sometimes that's on a page and often buried in
>> flash or dhtml .. but it wouldn't be very helpful, as it's  
>> actually the
>> same as the html url usually with extra code for email.
>
> If the data is in the DOM somewhere, we included the property. If the
> data doesn't reside in the DOM, then we did not include the property.
>
>> Also most individual users never publish "popularity rating" or  
>> "number
>> of views" etc.
>
> Got a list of examples that we could merge into the video-info- 
> examples
> page? That would be very helpful...
>
>> I thought the point of the microformat was for users and publishing
>> companies to be able to put out data that would be easily readable in
>> both an RSS feed and via spidering an html page, that was commonly
>> published online?
>
> It is! Most users are publishing video via MySpace, Yahoo Video,  
> Google
> Video and YouTube... service websites. However, if you have another
> subculture that we should examine, please give us some links so  
> that we
> may analyze those sites as well.
>
>> I think the basic set of commonly published items includes:
>>
>> title
>> html url (sometimes same and sometimes different from the url to  
>> embed,
>> or link directly to the video)
>> video url (if existing - could be multiple, see Blip or Revver or  
>> soon
>> to be Youtube)
>> category and / or tags
>> description
>> license
>> creator or uploader or both (many youtube videos have both, with
>> "director" as the creator designation)
>> embed code
>> size
>> duration
>>
>> We see these all elements highly published.
>
> We need your examples, then! :)
>
>> Also, the sense I get from your write up here:
>> http://microformats.org/wiki/video-info-examples
>>
>> is that you are more interested in the use-case of microformats for
>> selling video or other content.
>
> Nope... in fact, what we're finding is that most of the video sites do
> not sell content! Bummer, as we were hoping we'd find that they  
> do... :)
> but since we can't find many examples of this happening, it nullifies
> the idea that this is a use-case for selling video or other content.
>
> Thanks for the input Mary, always appreciated :). Do these statements
> help clarify matters?
>
> -- manu
>
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